Networking: Making Connections for Growth with Andrea Macek

Networking is the art of building connections and fostering relationships with individuals who can provide support, guidance, and opportunities. It involves cultivating a diverse network of mentors, peers, and protégés to learn from their experiences and expand one's perspective. But how can we effectively leverage our networks to maximize personal and professional growth? In this week's episode, we're joined by Andrea Macek, the Founder and CEO of AYM Consulting, to talk about what networking is and how to do it correctly. Andrea shares valuable insights on how to cultivate a strong network that can help you grow both personally and professionally. She enumerates the three types of people you should have in your network and some proven networking strategies. Tune in and learn practical tips for building a strong and supportive network. --- Listen to the podcast here: Networking: Making Connections for Growth with Andrea Macek Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. In the last episode, we talked about my friend Keith developing a whole new system to replace our applicant tracking systems, how we’re going to find a better way to connect employees to employers. However, there are other ways to make connections and one of those ways that a lot of people often ignore is networking. My guest today, Andrea Macek, is a woman that actually helped me quite a bit on my own job search journey last year and is also starting a new initiative around helping people with their networking game. Andrea basic is the founder of AYM Consulting. --- Andrea, welcome to the program. Thanks, Stephen, for having me, it’s so fun to connect with you and support you in a different way so this is really fun. It’s always interesting to have these relationships that take on a couple of different forms and one of the weird things I always say is that this podcast, the first 10, 12 episodes really began with just me talking to my friends and sharing it out here, so it is important to cover all that networking. First of all, actually, before we get into networking, tell us a little bit about what AYM Consulting, your full business, is all about. Sure, thank you. So, yeah, my name is Andrea Macek and I am speaking to your community, hi, everyone, today as the founder and CEO of my career coaching business, AYM Consulting. And so I started this business after I got laid off back in 2019 from my corporate healthcare career. I was in healthcare for almost 10 years and this really was out of necessity and out of my own experience, if you will. So, I started my career, like a lot of people, not knowing what I was going to do. I actually was dropped into the job search in 2008 during the Great Recession, two degrees in hand ready to go conquer the world and the market had other plans for me. So, I became my own career coach kind of early on in my career and really had to develop different skills and pivot and understand the market in ways that’s a whole ’nother podcast episode, Stephen — Well, yeah, for sure. — in a way college does not prepare you. Oh, yeah. I’ve mentioned that plenty of times about our education system teaching you, “You get one wrong answer, you’re going to fail and failing is the worst thing ever,” and that’s just not how the world works. Not how the world works, no. I’m happy to come back and rant with you about that topic. I used to work at a college, I was the career advisor. So, long story short, over the past 10, 15 years, I’ve been able to grow and pivot my career in a multitude of ways and networking has been that foundation. And while I was working, I was an HR business partner, I was in healthcare for a long time, one of my main passions and expertise areas was supporting my team. I grew and developed my team, a lot of my team got promoted and moved on after working with them and coaching them so I’ve been doing coaching informally, if you will, for almost 10 years before I stood up my business. My business was just a formalized version of what I had been doing and supporting job seekers and professionals for 10 years. So this was me stepping into that role fully and doing that. So, now, as a career coach, I focused mainly on supporting mid to experienced professional women, so 10 to 30 years, and I really help them identify and overcome barriers and their careers to really find what’s best for them. In your whole journey into becoming your own company, was networking a big part of it? How did networking play a role as in this is like your new initiative that you’re taking on? 100 percent. So, just to clarify too, so with my clients and my work that I do as a coach, I support individuals. Actually, Stephen and I are friends and we worked together last year, he was a client of mine so I do work with men on the exception, men know I’m not hating on you, I just, as a woman, I align more with women. I provide services for networking and also career development and exploration, really helping women find their best path.Share on X So, networking is one of those core foundations and, as you shared earlier, the ATS and job boards are not the only way to find a job. Unfortunately, job seekers tend to be told that’s one of the only paths to go down when it’s not. Networking, 85 percent of jobs, 85 percent, it’s a crazy stat, 85 percent of jobs are filled through networking. That was from an article by Career Contessa, they’re a reputable career source. They released an article recently with networking. Anyway, all that to say, networking is important because people hire people, people connect with people, we connect with individuals that are like us, we want to learn from, challenge us, so networking is always important and, yes, it is absolutely critical in how I stood up my business. I networked with other female entrepreneurs before starting my business to really understand what were their challenges, what did they do, what were their first steps, how did they go about doing that, and I really encourage professionals at any stage, any level of career, whether you’re a job seeker or not, to use networking to support you. So, networking has absolutely been pivotal every step of my career. And it sounds like one of the interesting and important things that you just brought up is that it wasn’t just networking with potential clients, networking to try to find your customers, or even to find your partners, you started out by networking with people who have already been on that similar journey as you to get notes and say, “Hey, you started your own business, what were the pitfalls? What were the things you didn’t think about?” Yes, which is incredibly important. Networking, again, is a tool that you can use no matter what your interests.Share on X Again, if you’re trying to set up a business, if you’re a job seeker, if you’re developing you career and you like what you’re doing, yes, you really want to have three main types of connections if you’re networking to really support yourself and one of those is people that are where you want to be. So, in my case, my end state, I wanted business to be my end state, I wanted to be a successful entrepreneur, so not only did I talk to entrepreneurs but I talked to entrepreneurs at every phase of the journey so women that were 3 months into business, women that were a year, 15 months, 5 years, 10 years, really, and looking at the stepping stones. So, one of the connections you want to have in your network is people who are where you actually want to end up and learn from them. So I can go into the other ones but I want to make sure I answer your questions but that’s, yes, exactly what I did is looking at and connecting with those individuals to understand what my journey could be like. Yeah, I think the phrase and sometimes I misattribute it to the rapper Pitbull, I’m sure it came before him, is show me your friends and I’ll show you your future. Yes, I love that, so true. I don’t know if someone said it before but he was the last person I heard saying that phrase so I’ll make that quote. But, yeah, so you’re saying people who are kind of like ahead of you on your journey, people who are already in the spot you want to be. What are the other two groups of people that you want to have in your network? What types of people, sorry, types of people? Yes, types of people and connections 100 percent. So you want somebody who has a similar background as yours as well. Any different parts of your background that you’re curious about, so the way that you grew up, your ethnicity, your gender, how you identify, so your personal characteristics but also your professional characteristics. Is your education the same? What are your experiences? What skills do you have? What are your natural strengths? So you want to look at kind of the aggregate of the person and really see — and I say similar because you want to, again, identify different steps you can take and it doesn’t have to be cookie cutter, I don’t want people to be cookie cutter into their paths but it really gives you a sense of what could happen. So that’s one part. We’ve already talked — excuse me, that’s one connection. We’ve already talked about the second connection, which is where you want to be. And the third type would be — so where you want to end up that also have been where you are now currently, again. So, again, similar background to you, they’re kind of at the end state where you want to end up, and then are where you are now. And so that’s going to give you three phases of perspective so your past, present, and future, essentially, is the type of connections that you’re looking at. And, again, it’s going to give you that reflection and different perspective. Again, past, present, and future to see, again,...